Anyone who wants to survive as a brick-and-mortar dealer in the future must offer their customers a special shopping experience and a functioning online store. That’s a widely known fact.
But the opposite is also true – and this is quite new: Anyone who wants to survive as an e-commerce retailer in the future needs an experience-oriented stationary POS structure – largely digitized. Companies like MyToys, Home24, Amazon or Zalando have already set up stores in shopping centers. Why is that? What has happened?
Today, more than 85 percent of total sales in the retail sector are still generated offline. The EHI Retail Institute has calculated that 57 percent of the 1,000 top-selling online shops also have brick-and-mortar stores – with a strong upward trend. These stores serve as brand-specific showrooms and “appetizer” for pleasure shopping.
“This development,” says Werner Vogt, managing director of Permaplay Media Solutions, “is only convincing and successful if the interface between analog stationary and digital online-based shopping experiences is seamless and imperceptible to the customer. And the key to this omni-channel universe of experience is digital technology.”
Werner Vogt: “We believe that digital technologies do not necessarily cannibalize brick-and-mortar retailing through e-commerce; rather, they are massively contributing to the evolution and appeal of the POS.”
Revitalization and recollection: The new "slow movement"
The crucial issue is: Successful are those companies that put technological achievements at the service of consumers. In a digitized world of the future, retailers become agents of human yearnings, trading places become creative habitats that offer sensual and personal experiences.
This development does not need to proceed according to the motto “faster, bigger, more digital” – on the contrary: The new “slow movement” has reached the shopping centers.
Currently, as various commercial research institutes have found out, a phase of (re‑)vitalization, optimization and recollection is dawning. Hybrid concepts based on mixed use transform shopping centers into lifestyle hubs and make it possible to integrate these places into people's everyday lives.
Permaplay supports this trend by offering interactive POS media as Android-based tablets with touch screen for playing apps, movies and HTML pages and Wi-Fi connection. These media are also suitable for presenting apps or video clips offline.
Findaria Sunardi, marketing and sales manager at Permaplay: “The great strength of interactive media lies above all in the multimedia nature of the advertising messages and their ease of operation.”
Permaplay also offers networked POS media systems to promote sales by allowing consumers to immerse themselves into the respective product and brand world. These systems consist of interactive and linear screens, where the screen contents are updated via a cloud-based system. “This POS media approach makes use of the potential of digital technologies of the future,” according to Werner Vogt.
